TL;DR: How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a frantic, funny, emotionally loaded murder mystery that blends Catholic guilt, teenage secrets, and middle-aged mayhem into one of the best Netflix shows of the year. Powered by a career-defining performance from Saoirse-Monica Jackson and razor-sharp writing from Lisa McGee, it’s chaotic in the best possible way. Watch it immediately.
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast
There are TV shows you enjoy. There are TV shows you recommend. And then there are TV shows you aggressively evangelize about like you’ve just discovered fire and want the village to gather round.
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is the third kind.
If you watch nothing else this year on Netflix, watch this. I’m not being hyperbolic. I’ve done the maths. I’ve factored in the prestige dramas, the algorithm-bait thrillers, the expensive sci-fi epics with more CGI than emotional depth. And still, this frenetic, wickedly funny, emotionally chaotic murder caper from Lisa McGee comes out swinging like it’s here to personally embarrass the rest of the streaming catalogue.
After redefining the coming-of-age sitcom with Derry Girls, McGee has pivoted from Catholic schoolgirl hijinks to middle-aged murder mystery — and somehow made the tonal whiplash feel seamless. The DNA is unmistakable. The rhythm. The razor-sharp dialogue. The chaotic feminine energy that feels like a group chat brought to life. Only this time, someone’s dead. Maybe.
And that “maybe” is where things get delicious.
The premise of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is simple enough to pitch at a dinner party: three former school friends reunite for the funeral of their fourth, Greta. They suspect foul play. They investigate. Madness ensues.
But McGee, being McGee, turns that basic scaffolding into a high-wire act of tone and pacing.
Dara, Saoirse, and Robyn haven’t just drifted apart; they’ve calcified into adult versions of themselves. Dara is controlled, brittle. Robyn is a walking stress fracture with four children and a toddler who she swears is gaslighting her. Saoirse — played with feral brilliance by Saoirse-Monica Jackson (yes, I know she’s not technically an athlete, but she performs like one in this series, sprinting emotionally from scene to scene) — is a TV crime writer who understands narrative structure a little too well.
At the wake, she notices something off. Greta’s body doesn’t have the occult tattoo the four girls once shared. The symbol we’ve already glimpsed in a flashback involving a forest shack, a fire, and a man who looks like he moonlights as a sleep paralysis demon.
From that moment on, this Netflix original stops being a straightforward whodunnit and becomes a chaotic symphony of suspicion.
And yes, the husband is played by Emmett J Scanlan, which is essentially casting shorthand for “this man has definitely done something unsettling.” The show knows it. We know it. My nervous system knows it.
Let’s talk pacing, because How to Get to Heaven from Belfast moves like it’s late for its own plot twist.
Clues pile up. Teenage diaries resurface. Letters appear like narrative jump scares. There’s ill-advised drinking (of course), a car crash (of course), a trip to Portugal (naturally), and a young guard named Liam who is brave enough — or naïve enough — to investigate his own boss.
It should feel like too much. In lesser hands, it would be.
But McGee writes chaos like a composer writes music. There’s structure under the frenzy. Every wild swerve is anchored by emotional logic. Every absurd escalation reveals something deeper about loyalty, guilt, and that very specific Catholic-flavoured moral anxiety that lingers long after the incense smoke clears.
At times, I genuinely wanted the show to slow down just so I could breathe. But then I realized that breathlessness is the point. These women aren’t solving a mystery in calm, prestige-drama fashion. They’re scrambling. Reacting. Spiraling. The show’s energy mirrors their panic.
And it’s glorious.
Midway through the series, there’s a performance from Saoirse-Monica Jackson that I can’t describe without ruining it. I won’t even try. Just know this: I paused the episode. I stood up. I walked around my living room like I’d just witnessed a magic trick.
It’s unhinged. It’s fearless. It’s precise in a way that only looks chaotic. If awards bodies have any taste left, they’ll be circling this moment like seagulls over chips.
Jackson already proved her comedic genius in Derry Girls, but here she adds layers of desperation, ego, and vulnerability that elevate the entire show. She plays Saoirse — the character — as someone who believes she understands narrative arcs so well that she might accidentally write her own downfall.
Watching her is like watching someone juggle knives while explaining Chekhov’s gun.
The supporting cast? Stacked. Michelle Fairley brings an icy, unsettling presence as Greta’s mother. Ardal O’Hanlon pops up in a role that feels like it wandered in from another genre and somehow works. Even the younger actors playing the teenage versions of the leads carry emotional weight that makes the flashbacks feel essential rather than decorative.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s excavation.
For all its frenetic plotting, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is quietly obsessed with questions of loyalty and complicity.
What do we owe our teenage selves? What do we owe each other? At what point does protecting a friend become enabling something darker?
There’s a recurring thread of Catholic guilt woven through the dialogue, sometimes as punchline, sometimes as existential undertow. A line about “an attack of the Catholics” lands as a joke, but it also hints at how deeply morality and shame are embedded in these women’s decision-making.
The show understands something fundamental: middle age isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about realizing how much of your identity was forged in moments you barely understood at the time.
The forest fire. The secret. The tattoo. These aren’t just plot devices. They’re metaphors for the way teenage choices calcify into adult consequences.
And somehow, amid all this, it remains very, very funny.
From a technical standpoint, this Netflix series looks slick without feeling sterile. The cinematography leans into moody blues and shadowy interiors during the investigative beats, then flips to warm, chaotic lighting during the friend-group scenes. It’s subtle but effective visual storytelling.
The editing deserves special mention. The show cuts hard and fast, especially during moments of escalating panic. It mirrors the characters’ mental state in a way that feels deliberate rather than indulgent.
Sound design is sharp too. There are moments where silence does more heavy lifting than dialogue, particularly in flashbacks.
It’s the kind of craft that doesn’t scream for attention but absolutely earns it.
In a landscape saturated with true crime docuseries and grimdark thrillers, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast feels rebellious. It’s a murder mystery caper that refuses to be dour. It’s character-driven without sacrificing plot velocity. It’s female-led without turning that fact into marketing copy.
Most importantly, it trusts its audience.
It assumes you can keep up. It assumes you appreciate moral ambiguity. It assumes you’ll laugh at a joke about gaslighting toddlers and then sit quietly with the weight of adult regret.
That confidence is intoxicating.
I went in expecting something adjacent to Derry Girls. What I got was sharper, darker, and arguably more ambitious. Lisa McGee has proven she’s not a one-hit wonder. She’s a storyteller who understands how to weaponize chaos.
And I, for one, am happily enlisted.
